Kanchan Belavadi

This is not a one-size-fits-all solution. I have found that the content pieces through the funnel vary based on what are the current business objectives, challenges and gaps. If you are a new business and trying to generate mindshare and attract visitors to your website, you’d need more assets at the top of the funnel. If you are a known brand and the space is established (e.g. CRM), then you probably need to focus more on the lower part of the funnel. Your current account strategy is also a factor. For up-selling into existing accounts, you will probably want to focus more on advocacy (from other units), case studies and use cases – which are at the bottom of the funnel.

What is the objective that you want to drive? Is it customer acquisition? Is the top of your funnel healthy, but conversions aren’t? Are you looking at optimizing cost and campaign performance? The answers to the above questions should give you the primary metrics and KPIs that you need to monitor. Some metrics that will show up are: * MQLs, SQLs, etc., which help you monitor your customer acquisition strategy * Metrics like, Sign ups, Meetings completed, Pipeline, Win Rate, Conversion of MQLs to SQLs, etc. can help you focus on conversions and pipeline health * Tracking Cost per Lead, Cost per customer, etc. are metrics that’d help you manage campaign performance Content metrics can range from website related - bounce rate, user engagement, leads generated, page views, to time spent on page, etc. But the ultimate test lies in conversions. Apart from the above, a continuous analysis of campaigns, source of SQLs, wins, etc. channels that are effective, will help you determine areas that are working and areas that need work.

Demand generation: reaching out to prospects, engaging with them and building pipeline. More broad based and focused mostly on customer acquisition. Growth marketing: more focused on the entire journey from customer acquisition to retention. This would include cross-selling, upselling to customers, so the journey continues. This also is a lot more data driven, where you’d access information about the customer’s usage of your product and leverage in-app features to reach out to customers. For reference look up AARRR (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue) for Growth Marketing.

Align with the business objectives! That’s the framework. Understand and fix the gaps. You deliver whatever the business needs. Sometimes, they may already have it, and just not know it, so as a demand gen manager, your job becomes to sift through the existing resources and deliver to the business. If it doesn’t exist, then identify the most effective way to deliver it. * Are they asking for more leads? Plan to deliver more leads (because you are new and need to establish credibility), but meanwhile, start checking what happens to the leads once you pass them to SDR/Sales? Are SLAs met? Who nurtures them? What are the top reasons you win and top reasons you lose deals? Are you targeting the right personas? Question and iterate. * Is lead quality an issue? Is conversion an issue? Get more specific feedback to understand the issue and go back to the drawing board if the persona/messaging needs to change. Agree and sign off with sales on the criteria for leads and the stage at which they will be passed to them. Monitor continuously throughout the funnel. * Are they asking for help with email templates? Understand what is currently available. Reuse if possible, revamp if needed Prioritize based on the business needs in order to see impact.

The most effective way is to scale in a way that best fits the organization’s needs and abilities. * Build vs fix: You might want to scale the function that is either doing well or is a critical need. For example, if social campaigns are effective and you know what needs to be done and how – then hire someone so you can scale it and hand it over. That will free your bandwidth to build and scale other tactics and programs. It can also be the reverse, e.g. if the SEO is not effective and you need to build content that works, you can either outsource or hire. * Inhouse vs outsource: The next step in scaling becomes a build vs outsource decision. Whether you want to build content, SEO, design, etc., internally or externally will determine how you scale our team. * Cross functional hiring: Once you decide to grow in house, then ensure to hire a good cross functional team covering all areas and then scale each function based on scale.

A start up without a demand gen manager has been relying either on organic leads or has been trying ad hoc tactics to boost the funnel. * Know the current environment: It is important to understand the full extent of the existing campaigns, processes and their effectiveness. Engage with the sales teams to understand their priorities and areas where they need help. * Understand the business objectives: The next step would be to understand the business objectives from the leadership and align accordingly. For example, if the need of the business is to boost top of the funnel, then the first 30 days would focus on setting up those campaigns. However, if the challenge is conversions, then the first 30 days should focus on the middle of the funnel with SDR/AE. * Execute: The 60 day plan should be about setting up processes and frameworks and the next 30 days should see launch of new campaigns in order to get those quick wins and monitoring their effectiveness with the help of the processes set in place.

The most important template is the Campaign calendar (of activities) – that everyone can track. A good campaign calendar gives a clear view of 1. All active campaigns 2. Gives a clear timeline 3. Identifies owners 4. Lists outcomes expected 5. Outlines asks and challenges My favourite is the product launch checklist, simply because it has too many moving parts and is a very critical finale to a product that is usually long in the making. A good checklist again lists owners, timelines, dependencies and next steps.

Quick wins will look different from organization to organization, depending on the company's need and stage. As you engage with different teams in the first few weeks, you will get clarity on where the fires are. Some quick wins can look like: * Revamp Email messaging: Do you need to revamp the email templates? * Build Customer advocacy: Are there no customer stories? * Upgrade Call scripts: Are the call scripts used by SDRs outdated? * Update content: Does the website have old outdated content? * Repurpose content: Is the content always long form, can it be repurposed into blogs or byte-sized quotes for quick consumption? * Website retargeting: Do you want to re-target website visitors? * Improve conversion: Do you want to focus on improving conversion?

Everything begins with “What are your business goals?” And I cannot emphasize this enough. If you have a marketing problem and don’t know where to start, ask yourself this question “What are the business objectives?” and go from there. You won’t go wrong. Depending on whether the business wants to acquire new logos or expand into existing accounts, or focusing on competitive wins, you know where your ABM accounts are coming from. Once the focus is clear, you can identify accounts based on size, vertical focus, existing tech stack (e.g. if already using a competitive product and your current focus is not on competitive wins, then drop) ICP, and even geo focus if your sales teams are aligned that way, to identify the right set of accounts.

A demand gen team in today’s world cannot exist without a content creator and a digital/SEO lead. These form the core and other functions can be build around them. So if you are starting from scratch, hire these 2 roles before you move on to other roles. A content creator should be able to build diverse pieces of content, which can be leveraged across different platforms. They should be able to understand what works in the market and align product messaging accordingly. A digital/SEO lead should be able to take that content to market and drive inbound as well as outbound leads to create a funnel.